Month: February 2018

There’s a new kid in town. Jay Powell’s first major speech as Chair of the Federal Reserve, the Monetary Policy Report to Congress, had an immediate impact on markets, interpretated as indicating a more hawkish stance than his predecessor. Time will tell but one interesting feature of his speech was his emphasis on monetary rules in setting policy, which he finds ‘helpful’, with an analysis of five such rules detailed in the Report.

It seems clear that the Fed do not slavishly follow any rigid precription in setting interest rates, although the rate paths implied by the various rules are apparently set out ahead of FOMC meetings in order to act as a guide, and Powell’s speech is likely to stimulate further market interest in this area.

The best known rule is named after John Taylor , and posits that the Fed funds rate should move by precribed amounts from its long run equilibrium level ( which on current FOMC forecasts is 2.75%) if inflation differs from the 2% target or if the real economy has moved away from its full employment level, which the Fed currently believes is consistent with an unemployment rate of 4.6%.

What does the Taylor rule imply now? The Fed expect inflation in 2018 to pick up to 1.9% but that the unemployment rate by the final quarter of the year will have fallen to 3.9% and so below the long-run equilbrium level , indicating that tighter policy is required, with an implied Fed funds rate of 3.3%, which is around 1% higher than the median FOMC expectation as set out in the ‘Dot Plot’. In other words rates would rise more rapidly than curently envisaged by the market , although over the following few years the ‘Dot Plot’ converges to the Taylor rule, albeit with the latter implying a modest easing of policy while the former points to a steady tightening. The Taylor rule also implied the need for negative rates following the financial crash and an “Adjusted Taylor rule’ take account of this insufficient monetary accommodation in the past by advocating a gradual return to the rate implied by an unadjusted Taylor rule, although the former has now largely converged to the latter.

What of the other rules discussed? A ‘balanced Approach’ rule gives a greater weight to deviations from full employment and that also indicates that policy is too accommodative, and indeed should be much tighter by end-year, with a Fed funds rate of 4%, before falling back to 2.75% in the long run. Not all rules imply the Fed is behind the curve, however, with the other two rules discussed arguing against aggressive tightening. One, the ‘First Difference rule’ takes account of the current level of the Fed funds rate and the pace at which unemployment is changing, and implies a policy rate of 1.75% by end-year, which is below the ‘Dot Plot’ figure . Similarly, another variant, ‘the ‘Price Level rule’, implies that policy is also too tight now and as projected because the rule adjusts for the fact that inflation has been below the 2% target for some time, so the price level is therefore lower than would be the case had inflation been at 2% every year.

All such rules are based on simplified models of complex and changing dynamics in the US economy, but ,as Powell noted, can be useful for policy makers . Three of the five imply that rates are too low given the Fed’s expectations for inflation and unemployment which may prove more significant with Powell at the helm.

Pay growth has been modest by historical standards across many developed economies in recent years, despite tightening labour markets, and Ireland is no exception- average weekly earnings only started to rise again in 2014, and average annual increases of around 1% have been the norm. Unemployment peaked in early 2012 at 16%, and has been falling steadily since, declining to 6.2% at the end of 2017, so one might expect that firms would have to increase pay to attract and retain labour.

Average weekly earnings did pick up through 2017, according to the latest CSO data, rising by by annual 2.5% in the final quarter of the year, which brought the annual average increase to 2%. The growth in private sector earnings last year was lower, at 1.8%, and was outpaced by the 2.6% average rise in the public sector. Pay in the latter is on average 41% higher than in the private sector, but has generally lagged since 2008, when the differential was 46%.

Average pay masks large differentials across the various sectors in the economy and the the recovery has been kinder to some workers than to others; the earnings of workers in Information and Communication, Scientific and Professional services and Adminstration and Support have all significantly outstripped the average growth in pay, while the Financial sector has recently recorded strong pay growth after steep falls during the recession. Surprisingly, perhaps, pay in construction is not as buoyant as one might imagine, with average earnings barely increasing in 2017 and still below the 2008 level.

Consumer prices rose by only 0.4% last year so a 2% pay rise translated into a 1.6% increase in real earnings. Nominal pay growth is generally expected to accelerate in 2018, given the further erosion of slack in the labour market, although, as seen elsewhere, the traditional relationship between unemployment and pay growth, the Phillips Curve, has become much flatter,